>^ ex S33X . MS 1Q7^ V ^^^oF ?mmo^ MAR 3 1 1977 ^^EOLCG;aisi^^f^' 3/ 633) Baptis Beliefs MAR 31 1977 By E. Y. MULLINS, D.D., LL.D. VALLEY FORGE JUDSON PRESS Copyright, 1912, by BAPTIST WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY Copyright, 1925, by THE JUDSON PRESS Valley Forge, Pa. International Standard Book No. 0-8170-0014-3 Twelfth Printing, 1974 Printed in U.S.A. CONTENTS. Introduction 5 The Scriptures .10 God 16 Providence 20 The Fall of Man 24 Election 26 The Mediator 29 The Holy Spirit 35 Regeneration 39 Repentance 40 Faith 41 Justification and Adoption 45 Sanctification 49 The Perseverance of the Saints 53 The Kingdom of God 55 The Second Coming of Christ 58 The Resurrection. 59 The Judgment 59 The Church 62 Baptism 68 ) The Lord's Supper 70 ) The Lord's Day 71 Liberty of Conscience 72 Missions 73 Education 74 Social Service 76 Heaven and Hell. 77 New Hampshire Declaration of Faith . . 83 pOVENANTS 93, 95 BAPTIST BELIEFS. A creed is like a crystal with many angle? and facets. As the crystal is formed in obe- dience to natural law, so a creed is formed in obedience to a spiritual law. Michael Angelo chiseled the marble into the heroic figure of Moses as the expression of his artistic vision. The great creeds are the chiseled results of spiritual vision. What men see and feel they must express. Doctrinal statements are given exact form for the same reason an Indian makes his arrow straight and sharp. Both are designed as weapons, or implements to achieve results. This is not written as a formal creed. If so it would be much more condensed. A very few sentences at most would be sufficient for each article. But there are a numiber of ex- cellent Baptist creeds in existence already, and what is proposed here is not the setting up 6 BAPTIST BELIEFS. of another, but rather a restatement and inter- pretation for the general reader of those now in existence and in common use among us. An effort is made to avoid technical theological terms as far as possible to provide the simplest and clearest statement. There are, of course, many topics touched upon in the pages which follow where the paths of discussion lead in various directions. We are required by the limited scope of our undertaking, however, to abstain from too elaborate treatment of any subject. A general survey of the beliefs com- monly held by Baptists with the necessary cross lines to mark off the sub-divisions of teaching clearly and distinctly is all we can hope to accomplish within our prescribed lim- its. One caution is needed at the outset. Creeds are very valuable when used properly, but, like all other good things, dangerous when used otherwise. 'Creeds are the natural and normal expression of the religious life. The right to miake them is nothing more nor less than the divinely given right to think. He who would forbid men to make creeds expres- sive of their own religious life in the light of Bible teaching, would therein forbid the free exercise of human freedom to think. But ob- serve this point: creeds are the expression of religious life, of vital or living experience. The great creeds which have powerfully in- fluenced the life of mankind have all arisen BAPTIST BELIEFS. 7 in periods of great religious energy and deep religious experience. They are like lava which comes hot from the volcano. An inner power expels them. The lava cools afterward. The creed tends to become stereotyped and formal. There is another truth which must always be kept in mind. The right to make creeds is simply another way of saying that we have no right to enforce them upon men against their wills. The voluntary principle is at the heart of Christianity. The right of private judgment in religion is a right which lies at the core of Christian truth. The right of A to make a creed expressive of his 'Own religious life implies the right of B to make his own creed as well. It would be tyranny to forbid A to make his creed, and it would be equal tyranny to compel or attempt to compel B to accept the creed of A. If A and B should by voluntary co-operation come to see alike and thus adopt the same creed there would be no tyranny. And if A and B and any number of others should thus set forth their beliefs for all the world to understand, this would be simply the exercise of their free- dom in Christ. And this is precisely the way Baptist creeds and confessions of faith have arisen. No Baptist creed can be set up as final and authoritative apart from the Scriptures. They are all subject to revision when- ever an-d wherever other Baptists see fit to 8 BAPTIST BELIEFS. make a fresh statement of their doctrinal behefa. Of course, Baptists have a right to the peaceful exercise of their freedomi in holding and maintaining their own views as to Christian truth. In this the group or denomination corresponds to the individual in the matter of freedom. Consequently they themselves must judge when an individual or group within the larger body has departed from the common view sufficiently to warrant separation. The enforced continuance of an individual with the larger group after radical and hopeless divergence of belief has arisen is a tyranny equal with the enforcement of the beliefs of the group upon the individual. Re- ligious freedom, in other words, is a right of the group as well as of the individual. The voluntary principle applies equally and alike to both. It is on this principle indeed that most of the denominations since the Reforma- tion have come into existence. Denomina- tionalism is the result of the right of private judgment in religion. A Baptist should be the last man in the worid to question the right of a Presbyterian, Methodist or any other, to the full and free exercise of his right of private judgment in religion. If denominationalism •ever ceases to exist and all Christians become one it will be not by means of artificial schemes of union, but through the gradual growth of unity of view, that is, through the operation of Hhe voluntary principle. 7 / BAPTIST BELIEFS. 9 Another peril of creeds is that we shall mis- take the shell for the kernel, the form for the life. Creeds that are forged when religious life is at white heat may remain after the fire has gone out. The creed without the life then becomes a chain to bind, not wings on which the soul may fly. The one and only remedy, then, is to return to Christ and kindle the flame of religion once more. Creeds are useful only so long as they are the normal expression of life and are used as a means of propagating life. To hold a creed as intellectually true mere- ly, without the inner life and power, is not a re- ligious act at all. The New Testament knows nothing whatever of any such holding of creeds and we would do well to reject all creeds and go straight to the New Testament rather than lapse into a barren intellectualism through a dead creed. The danger is so great that this barren intellectualism will arise, or that creeds will be employed as whips to coerce men into uniformity of belief by oarnally- minded champions of the faith, that many Baptists exercise their freedom by having nothing to do with creeds, or rather by repu- diating all of them, and looking to the Scrip- tures alone for their doctrinal beliefs. Here, lagain, they are strictly within their rights as freemen in Christ. Nevertheless, I think creeds perform a useful function in edu- cating us to unity of faith and practice, so long as they are not worn as death masks for / / 10 BAPTIST BELIEFS. defunct religion, or em!ployed as lashes to chastise others; so long as they do not arrest life and growth — in short, creeds help raither than hinder. A cre^ is like a ladder. On it yo.u may climb up to a lofty outlook, a purer spiritual atmosphere, or you may climb down to the low platform of a barren orthodoxy. In this spirit the following pages are writ- ten. The author has no sort of thought that his statement is the best that can be made, or in any sense final. Others will improve on these statements and we shall come more and more to a clear understanding of the meaning of the Bible and of the religion of Christ. THE SCRIPTURES. There are three marks which in a general way may be said to sum up the position of the Scriptures in the belief of Baptists. The first is sufficiency. The Scriptures give us enough truth for all religious purposes. Nature re- flects the divine attributes to a certain extent and, according to Paul, if men should actually live up to the light of nature within, in con- science, and without, in the universe, they might arrive at a knowledge of God, so that they are without excuse. For, owing to their naturally evil bent, men refuse to follow the light of nature (Romans 1:19-21). Taking men as they are, therefore, on account of sin, the light of nature is insufficient. A revela- BAPTIST BELIEFS. 11 tion of God to them and a coming of God into their lives are the only means for their re- demption. In the Scriptures we have all the truth required for the religious life of men. Another quality of the Scriptures which fits them to serve as the source of light and truth in religion is certainty. There are greater or less degrees of certainty in science and philoso- phy. Yet scientific and philosophic theories are always subject to revision. Science does attain to permanent truth. But this truth of science is not religious truth at all, save in the general sense that all truth is of God. The laws of nature, like the law of gravitation, or the laws of motion, or the laws of chemical affinity, for example, have no direct religious value >at all. None of them can save the soul. Physical science, indeed, ends where religion begins, viz., at the realm of spirit and of per- sonal fellowship between God and man. Phy- sical science cannot prove or disprove the soul's immortality or the existence of God. Philos- ophy, in like manner, fails to prove, as religion requires, the great truths of human life and destiny. Philosophy gives us a set of rational theories of the world, some of which include a belief in God, and some of which do not. Each theory or world view of philosophy selects some one thing, matter, or motion, or mind, or will, or personality, or something else, and de- duces all the rest from that. But so long as men are at liberty to select these various things 12 BAPTIST BELIEFS. on which to build their philosophies there will be as many kinds of philosophy as there are preferences among men. No one philosopher can compel the others to select his own starting point, any more than one woman can require other women to agree with her taste as to the most beautiful shade of silk or shape of hat. Hence we repeat, philosophy does not yield certainty in religion. The Bible does. The Bible tells us how to find God and by follow- ing its directions we actually find him. God comes into our life and we know beyond a per- adventure that the Bible speaks to us truly con- cerning God. The third quality of the Scriptures is author- / itativeness. The Scriptures speak with author- ity, as does no other literature in the world. This authoritative note which rings so clear in the Bible is not due to anything external to itself. No court made it authoritative by de- cree. No ohurcfh council made it so by de- cision. No pope made it so by hurling anathemas at those who denied it. The early church councils in the second, third and fourth centuries did not make the Bible au- thoritative. They simply recognized the authority of the Book itself. The canon of Scripture under God took care of itself. It was inevitable that this dynamic and mighty literature would come together in a vital and organic unity since it was all created by one oommon life and power of God. BAPTIST BELIEFS. 13 Behind this sufficiency and authoritativo- ness of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is their inspiration. Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. There are many ways of explaining the method of inspiration which men have adopted. We cannot here discuss them^ The fact is the supreme thing. The Bible is Grod's message to man given to supply the needs of his religious life. When we find that message we have God's truth to us which is all we need for religious knowledge, faith and obedience. The process of inspiration is neces«;arily more or less mysterious and obscure, since it is God's act through his Spirit stooping to the plane of the human intellect and experience and em- ploying these as channels of truth to other men. Someone has compared this act of con- descension on God's part to the slightly stoop- ing statue of a beautiful woman found in a European art collection. By no process of measurements has it been possible to -determine just how much below the height of the erect fig- ure the stooping statue measures. In like man- ner we are without any power to determine precisely how God adapts himself to human capacity in the process of inspiration. The re- sult, however, we possess in the oracles of the Scriptures, and these serve all our practical re- ligious needs and ends. The Bible is the book of religion. Let us keep this in mind. It is a mistake to think 14 BAPTIST BELIEFS. of it as a text-book on science or any other subject except religion. In conveying religious truth the writers of the Bible could only gain a hearing for their inspired religious message by employing the means of conveying ideas in common use. It is astonishing, indeed, how the Bible statements conform broadly and gen- erally to the teachings of science. But the biblical writers had to use the language of ap- pearances, of things as they looked to the ordi- nary eye, not the language of exact science. Suppose Job, for example, had been inspired to use the Newtonian law of gravitation in his debate with his friends, would it have helped out the argument? Would it not rather have discredit'Od him more than ever? The law of gravitation as stated 'by exact science is that bodies attract each other di- rectly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance. Now we can imagine the Spirit of God revealing this to Job. But it implies the whole of modern astronomy with its Copernican view of the universe. It came as the result of careful and painstaking ex- periment and calculation. His friends would have been unconvinced by it had Job employed it. It would have been to them an unknown tongue, save as the result of a miracle of rev- elation to them also, enabling them to antici- pate the researches of science thousands of years. And this indicates clearly how God re- iuses to rob man of his own proper task of re- BAPTIST BELIEFS. 16 search and discovery by miracles of revelation concerning physical matters. The Bible waa not meant to teach us '^how the heavens go, but how to go to Heaven". Job would therefore probably have discredited his own message had ihe sought to become a channel for the com- munication of a knowledge of the laws of as- tronomy in the scientific sense. The man of today makes a similar mistake when he stakes the integrity and authoritative- ness of the Bible on its exact agreement with the Newtonian law of gravitation or the Ooper- nican astronomy. The Bible is not a book of science. It is a book of religion. The Bible must be interpreted. But we have for our illumination in interpreting the same Spirit who inspired it. Everything in the Bible is not equally binding on us, because wicked men speak, Pharaoh, Judas, the devil. We must get Ged^s message by interpreting under the Spirit^'S guidance. There are parables •and allegories and symbols; literal and high- ly picturesque statements; and there are writ- ers with varied individualities and points of view. There is progress from less to more of truth. Ged gave the truth gradually. In all these ways the necessity for interpretation is upon us. It is a great and high responsibility, but we cannot evade it, and we cannot know what God's message to us is until we have interpreted it and made due allowance for all the facts which have been named. But w^en 16 BAPTIST BELIEFS. we have found out what the Bible means to eay to us we have the truth. We may sum up all by saying the Bible culminates in Christ. He is the crown of the whole. All doctrine before and after CJhrist must be seen in the light which shines from him if we are to understand it. Christ, then, is God's message to us and we ore to imder- stand the whole Bible simply and solely in its relations to Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world. 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Luke 16:29-31; Ephesians 2:20; 2 Peter 1: 19-21; Romans 15:4; Hebrews 1:1, 2; Psalms 19:7, 8; Romans 1:19-21; 1 John 5:9; Romans 3:1,2; John 16:13; 15:26, 27; 14:25, 26; 1 Corinthians 2:4, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16; 1 John 2:20, 27; John «:45; 1 Corinthians 14:26; 2 Peter 3:16; Psalm 119:130; Isaiah 8:20; Acts 15:15; John 5:39; 1 CoHnthians 14:6, 9, 11, 12, 24, 28; Colosaiana 3:16; Matt)hew 22:29; Acta 28:23. GOD. It is impossible to define God, because he is more and greater than all definitions. This does not mean that we must remain ignorant of God's character. For we do possess most real knowledge of God through tho revelation he has given us in grace and power in our hearts and lives. There are certain qualities or attributes which we ascribe to God in con- sequence of his revelations in nature and in experience and in Scripture. These must not be taken as if they were exhaustive statemients of what God is either himself or in his mani- BAPTIST BELIEFS. 17 festations. First, we say God is a spiritual being. Jesus said to the woman at the well, *'God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him' in spirit and in truth." This is, we may say, the first truth in spiritual reli- gion. God has not a visible outward form or figure. He is pure spirit. It is curious how many people fail to grasp the idea of God's spirituality and cling to the pictures of him learned in the nursery. The writer has met several adults, among them students in theology, who had difficulty in overcoming the physical way of representing God. Some think of him as a very wise old man with gray hair and beard sitting above the world on a great throne, or else they cling to other more or less vague and misty pictures of God under various human forms. It is very necessary that we grasp the idea of God's spirituality and nearness, his omnipresence and power in our lives if we are to walk with him as we should. Again God is one. There are not many gods, but only the one true God. The doc- trine of many gods is polytheism and against it the prophets of the Old Testament poured out their inspired and burning eloquence. The Old Testament is the record of how God trained Israel to the thought of a pure monotheism, that is, to the belief in one holy and spiritual God. The unity of God is another of the first truths of religion. a— Oct. 21. 18 BAPTIST BELIEFS. God is personal. Some modern theories seek to enforce the idea of an impersonal Grod, or, in the current expression, an impersonal ''world-ground'\ This thought of an imper- sonal ground of the world grows out of the thought of substance which science uses in its dealings with nature. It is sought to reduce all things to one physical principle in order to explain scientifically everything that exists. But the impersonal substance is not God. Re- ligion teaches, -and most of all Christianity teaches, that God is above as well as in nature ; that nature and substance, while the expres- sion of God's wisdom and power are not God himself. Religion dies when God ceases to be personal in the thoughts of men, because every- thing in religion requires a personal God. It is not surprising, then, that when men forsake the idea of a personal God they lapse into polytheism and invent many gods, or else they adopt the philosophy of pantheism instead of religion, and remain content with that. Again, God is holy. The moral law 13 grounded in God. He is its author and is himself clothed with all moral perfections. God is infinite. This means that God is free of all imperfections. Our minds cannot grasp the infinite fully. The word is nega- tive in the sense that it seeks to express the thought that God has no limitations of any kind. God, then, is infinite in all his at- BAPTIST BELIEFS. 19 tributes — wisdom, holiness, love, power and all others which may be named. The Scriptures also reveal to us that God manifests himself to men not only as one but as triune. In the Old Testament God's Spirit appears in many forms of activity, although the Trinity does not appear in the Old Testa- ment as a fully developed truth as in the New. The New Testament clearly shows that there are three forms of God's personal manifesta- tion in the world, called Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This does not mean that God shows himself as first one, then another of these. They are distinct in their personal activities. Of course, w'hen we call them persons we do not use the word in its ordinary- sense. A human person is a separate and dis- tioct individual and if we use the word in this meaning referring to the Trinity we would imply three gods, which would be polytheism. Yet personality is the most fitting word we can find to express the truth as to the Trinity. The Bible does not explain the TrinHy. It simply gives us the facts. Theologians and philosophers have tried hard to give sin intel- lectual expression to the doctrine of the Trin- ity. None of them have succeeded fully. Some of them have been very elaborate and have attempted entirely too much perhaps. Never- theless we must accord them the right to make these attempts. It will probably be found in the end, however, that the briefer the defini- 20 BAPTIST BELIEFS. tion of the Trinity the better for practical pur- poses. God is revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These have personal qual- ities. Yet God is one. This is the New Tes- tament teaching. Beyond this we tend toward speculation. Exodus 15:11; Psalm 147:5; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 6:3; 1 Peter 1:15, 16; Mark 12:30; Matthew 10:37; Matthew 28: 19; 1 Corinthians 12:4-6; 1 John 5:7; John 10:30; John 5:17; John 4:24; Ephesians 2:18; 2 Corinthians 13:14. PROVIDENCE. God who created the world upholds it. In the ongoing of the world there are no surprises to God. He foresees and foreknows all things whatsoever which may or can or do take place. God is above the world but he is also in it. He does not hold himself aloof from his universe and watch its movements as if it were merely a machine. He is present in it everywhere at all times. He is in and through and above all things. God's purpose includes all things which come to pass. Some things, however, God sim- ply permits. God is not the author of sin. It entered the world not by his approval but only by his permission. Yet he overrules it. Somehow the possibility of sin was connected with the freedom of God's intelligent creatures. It is this freedom which lifts men above the brutes. Yet it was this same freedom which BAPTIST BELIEFS. 21 made possible a sinful choice. That sinful choice in like manner made possible a display of God's love and grace which could not have appeared in a non-sinning universe. This does not condone sin; it simply indicates how God. transformed it into an occasion for boundless condescension and love. Most of the difficulties about God's grace and human freedom are due to the prevalent way of thinking about grace and its action upon us. Grace comes from without, but it acts within us. It flows in as it were and works itself out through our minds, consciences and wills. It moves us freely. It inclines us to act voluntarily as God wills. It is not like a crow- bar resting on a fulcrum by means of which a Stone is moved. It is rather like water in a millrace filling the receptacles on the rim and turning the wheel. Our faculties are the re- ceptacles on the wheel of our personality. Or again, grace is like the sap in a tree, and our conduct is like the fruit. The fruit is pro- duced from' within. Grace is not mechanical, but personal in its action. This distinction explains hardshellism. Preaching, persuasion, missions, evangelism, are all based on the prin- ciple that grace is not a mechanical but a per- sonal force. If grace were a crowbar and men stones, hardshellism would be right. It is the crowbar conception of grace that destroys mis- sions. Grace works with those means which influence the free choices of men, persuasion. 22 BAPTIST BELIEFS. argument, appeal, warning, exhortation, etc. The whole New Testament conception of preaching grows out of the fact that grace is a personal, not a mechfinical, force. Ideas, feelings, volitions in the preacher through God's Spirit, awaken ideas, feelings, volitions in the sinner. This is the method of grace. A bulb may have sleeping in it the potentiali- ties of a beautiful flower. Something from without must enter it, however, before it can ever become a flower, something it does not possess, viz., the sunlight and its warmth. Transferring the bulb from one basket to an- other would not bring out the flower. The Spirit of God must enter and change the sin- ner's heart before the slumbering possibilities can be brought forth. It is the unfolding of his personality into moral and spiritual life which is the aim of the Gospel. This can only be accomplished as the living personality of one m'an becomes in some way the medium through which the truth and grace and power of God enters the life of another. At least this is God's ordinary method, whatever may be true in exceptional cases like that of Saul of Tarsus and others. God made man free and leaves him free. God never overrides the will of man. In his action upon man's will he always respects that will. "Irresistible grace" is a phrase we some- times hear. But properly understood it never means irresistible in the physical sense, as if BAPTIST BELIEFS. 23 God dealt with us as a parent might with a crying and disobedient and rebellious child in lifting it bodily and carrying it where the child refused to go. God will have us come to him freely. Grace always persuades and convinces and makes us willing to come, how- ever mysterious and mighty it may be in ita action upon our hearts. The crown of God's creation is man. AH the previous stages led up to this being who was made in the image and likeness of God. This is the chief interest of religion in tho wonder and mystery of creation. The ques- tion of how God created the world, or how long it has been since the creation of man, are questions Which are not fully answered in the Scriptures. Science is at work on them and may or may not succeed in answering these questions fully. The book of Genesis contains light on some points, but not all. One thing is clear, however, and that is that God made man in his own image and that man sinned. Another point is clear and that is that the redemption of sinful man is the center of God's providential care of the world. If we would understand providence then we must study what God has done to redeem the world. Genesis, chapters 1 and 2; John 1:2,3; Romans 1:20; Hebrews 1:2; Job 26:13; Oolosslans 1:16; Romans 2:14-16; Isaiah 46:10, 11; Psalm 135:6; Ephesians 1:11; Acts 2:23, 24; Acts 7:1-60; Acts 14: 16-18; Acts 17:24- 28. 24 BAPTIST BELIEFS. THE FALL OF MAN. The meaning of the fall of man is that man sinned against God. Sin is not human infirmity mierely, nor is it a mistake merely, nor is it ignorance merely. Sin, again, is not merely a step upward in man's evolution to- wards his highest development. The fall was a downward and not an upward movement of man. It involved guilt and transgression. It gave rise to the need of pardon, of grace and redemption. Man came under condenmation as the result of his fall. The fall, then, means that man was really man when he fell and not merely a creature who was on his way towards becoming man, a candidate, as it were, for manhood. Of course, we are not to suppose he possessed all that has come to man in man's struggle, nor all the experience or knowledge which history has 'brought. Man was not made omniscient, nor even learned in the mod- ern sense. He was made free from sin and condemnation, and through the temptation of Satan he fell. In consequence of the fall of man sin has become hereditary. No teaching of science is clearer today than the hereditary transmis- sion of traits of character. The Old Testament gave religious recognition to the principle long before science discovered and demonstrated it. As a result of this sinful heredity of race, all men actually sin when they acquire capacity BAPTIST BELIEFS. 25 for sinning. We believe that infants dying in infancy are saved not because they have no share in the operation of the hereditary ten- dency to sin, but because Christ atoned for all the race, and som/ehow children dying in in- fancy, before actual sin, share in the blessing of that atonement. The Scriptures really say little of the salvation of infants dying in in- fancy, but they say enough to warrant firm be- lief in that salvation. The grace of God deals with them in a special nuanner, no doubt, aa we mtust hold if we believe in hereditary sin and at the same time in the salvation of infanta dying in infancy. No one is or can be saved without repentance and faith, who is capable of exercising repent- ance and faith. This is the clear teaching of the Scriptures. Hereditary and actual sin ren- der men not only corrupt but also guilty andi condemned until they are justified by faith in Jesus Ohrist. All men are not equally sinful, of course, and no man is as bad as he can be. But all man's faculties and powers are affected by the operation of sin in his nature, and all are equally incapable of saving themselves. All are dependent alike upon God's grace for sal- vation. Genesis 1:31; Genesis 2:16, 17; Genesis 3:12, IS; Genesis 3:6-24; Romans 3:23; Genesis 6:5; Titus 1:15; Romans 3:10-18; Romans 8:7; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 5:12-21; Galatians 5:16-21; Isaiah 53:6; Epliesians 2:1-3; Ezeklel 18:19,20. 26 BAPTIST BELIEFS. ELECTION. In consequence of their sinful nature and ihabitual choice of evil, men, if left to them- selves, would inevitably refuse salvation. A 30 BAPTIST BELIEFS. tinies of his church and will come again at the time appointed by the Father to judge the world. Two or three points call for special empha- sis. Attempts are often made in our day to hold that Jesus was the first true revealer of God in conjunction with the other view that in no sense did he transcend the human. This is a favorite view with many who feel that science forbids them to accept the true divinity or deity of Jesus. They would make of him simply the great- est of the prophets or the greatest of the saints, but as such they think that he brings us the true knowledge of God. If men insist on applying the criterion of physi- cal law to religion, however, they can never prove the existence of God even. For the laws of nature comie to an end when we rise above nature into the realm of persons, and especial- ly when we come to deal with the divine per- son. Science explains horizontally or on a level, we may say. The cause of every eflPect in physical nature lies behind the effect on the same level. The series of causes and effects in nature is like a row of bricks. Knock over the first brick in the row and in turn each of the others will be knocked over. Nothing is ex- plained in nature save as we assign something we know to explain a new and unknown thing. The effect must be explained in terms of the cause. A brick must be explained by another BAPTIST BELIEFS. 31 brick. This is the meaning of the law of the transformation of energy or physical causa* tion. If nature is a row of bricks, then we never find a God in nature, but only an endless row of bricks. This I say is the way science treats nature. Science, therefore, never can prove or disprove God's existence. It is difficult to see how men can accept the testimony of Jesus as to what God is unless they admit that he reveals God not merely from the human but also from the divine side. Jesus was not merely the 'Trince of Saints", as Martineau has called him. He could not be a revealer of God in the full sense of the word unless he was more than the chief of saints. We would seem to be left with no sure knowledge of God, there- fore, unless Jesus was moie than a man. For science never demonstrates God. aJid the experience of even the greatest of saints would always bo open to questiori when he attempted to convey to us a knowledge of -the infinite God. As limited and human in mental capacity his experience might be perfectly genuine, but the rigidly scientific objector could always raise a question as to whether the explanation of the experience was the true and correct one. To himself the explanation might be perfectly satisfactory, but so long as the objector could question his capacity to grasp the infinite and convey an adequate revelation of God, his testimony would find limited acceptance. If Jesus, then, 32 BAPTIST BELIEFS. was a genuine and final revelation of God to men, he must have been more than a man reaching up and seeking to find God. He must also have been God coming down among men and making himself known to them. And this is precisely the testimony of the Scriptures, so that in Jesus Christ we have the true revelation of God to man. Christ's atonement was necessary for the pardon, justification and redemption of sinners. There are many theories of the atonement, too many for discussion here. They may easi- ly be grouped into two classes: First, those which make Christ's work on the cross termi- nate on men only; and, second, those which make it terminate also on God. The latter is the true view. God, indeed, was not induced to love men by what Christ did. He loved them beforehand, and Christ's work was the expression and proof of his love. It was not that God was an unwilling tyrant who had to be bought over to man's side by the shedding of Christ's blood. The atonement was God's own arrangement and provision to meet an infinite necessity of his holy and loving nature. God set forth Christ to be the propitiation for our sin in order that he might be both just and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus Christ. It is sometimes argued that this idea of an objective or substitutionary atonement, some- thing done by Christ, which is the ground BAPTIST BELIEFS. 33 of the remisQion of sins, is not a part of the true Gospel of Christ, but was a bit of Judaism brought over into Christ's true Gospel by Paul, who was originally a Jew. This is a very in- consistent view of Paul. For it is very gener- ally recognized that Paul was the one apostle who fully escaped the narrow trammels of Judaism and grasped fully the universaUsm of the Gospel. In particular it is Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which revolutionized Judaism, or rather overthrew it completely, and showed that the Gospel was as wide as the world in its meaning and intention. This, I say, is quite generally admitted. And yet there are those who allege that wrapped up with Paul's universal doctrine which killed Judaism, is an essential part of Judaism which would kill the Gospel, viz., his doctrine of an objective atonement. Paul certainly thought of his doctrine in the main as the direct antith- esis and contradiction of Judaism. In part indeed it was the fulfillment of Judaism, but in that fulfillment Judaism was abolished. Paul's doctrine of atonement, then, is not an alien element in the Gospel. Jesus himself predicted that he would give his life a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28) and that he would shed his blood for the remission of sins (Matt. 26:28). The Scriptures indeed refrain from philosophizing about the atonement, but they set forth the truth in suc^h termis that we can- not truly say that we are left entirely in the 34 BAPTIST BELIEFS. \ daxk as to how Christ's death saves us. The hoUness of God no less than his love required the atoning work of Jesus. It is a false method which separates one attribute of God, such as his love, from other attributes, and asserts that God acted in a part of his nature only in his approach to men in the atoning work of Jesus. God acted always as a unit, in his entire nature, not in a fragment of it. From the fact that other religions including Judaism have in them the idea of sacrifice and propitiation, it is concluded by some that it must be a false idea. Fundamentally this assumes that everything in the non-€hristian religions must be wholly false. Is it not far more likely that a universal religious idea has in it an element of truth than that its univer- sality is a mark of its falsity? Christianity purified and fufilled all religious ideas of men, emptied them of their transient and superficial meanings and revealed their true inward mean- ing. The atonement of Christ in a very spe- cial manner does this. In it God appears in Christ, not as a distant, implacable and angry being, requiring a satisfaction for sin which man cannot supply. He himself, as holy and loving and yearning to save men, provides the Batisf action. Christian experience throu^ the ages haa given a hearty amen to the substitutionary atonement of Christ. The sinner knows well that it answers exactly his need so soon as he begins BAPTIST BELIEFS. 35 to reflect upon and repent of hig sins. Dr, Bushnell, who rejected the objective atonement of Christ and made it simply an appeal to man's heart, leading him to repentance, never- theless admitted that the sinner could not get along without the "altar forms" and ideas. The guilty conscience requires an objective atonement, something done for it as well as in it. If this be true, and it is true beyond a doubt, wherever there is a deep sense of sin and guilt, then it must rest upon a deep neces- sity of some kind. Hence we are right in tak- ing the Scriptures at their word w'hen they assert that Christ's atonement was not a mer© dramatic spectacle, a mere object lesson appeal- ing to human hearts. It was also based upon a deep necessity in the law of righteousness and in the holy character of God. John 3:16; Luke 19:10; Isaiah 42:21; Isaiah, chapter 53; Hebrews 1:8; Hebrews 1:3; Phlllpplans 2:6, 7; Ephesians 2:8; Ephesians, chapter 1; Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 7:26; 1 Peter 1:19; Hebrews 1:2; Ro- mans 8:30; 1 Timothy 2:6, 6; Romaus 6:lff: Romana 8:24-26; Hebrews 9:15. THE HOLY SPIRIT. The New Testament reveals to us the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in its completed form. His work is a most essential and vital part of the religion of Christ. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit wrought upon the hearts of men in manifold ways. He was present in creation. 36 BAPTIST BELIEFS. bringing the present cosmos out of the prime- val chaos. He was present in the propheta and leaders in Israel and in many other ways his power was manifested. Not, however, until we come to the New Testament do we find the fully developed doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity. The Holy Spirit was present everywhere in the earthly ministry of Jesus, clothing him with power for his messianic work. Through his power the body of Jesus was raised from the dead. The Spirit was given in his full- ness on the day of Pentecost, to abide with the people of Christ forever. He convinces the world of sin, regenerates the heart, leads and guides Christians, making clear to them revealed truth. He sanctifies and sustains believers in trial and temptation and struggle. His mission is to glorify Christ, so th-at what Christ does he does, and what he does Christ does. In Paul's writings especially the doc- trine of the Holy Spirit is developed most fully. The whole inner life of the believer is under his influence and subject to his power. We are commanded to grieve not, quench not, and resist not the Holy Spirit. We 'are sealed by the Spirit. The Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. The fruits of the Spirit are described over against the fruits of the flesh. The Spirit teaches the apostles in their labors and in the writing of their epistles. Christ predicted that the Spirit would come thus to BAPTIST BELIEFS. 37 take his place when he left the earth and that it was expedient for him to go in order that the Holy Spirit might come. It is a strange and very significant fact that Christians for nearly two thousand years have so generally neglected the New Testament teaching as to the Holy Spirit. The creeds of Christendom have done scant justice to the doctrine and some of the greatest of them have scarcely done more than barely mention his office work. The Philadelphia Confession of Faith used by so many Baptists and the New Hampshire Confession also quite generally used are without separate articles on the Holy Spirit, although both of them make refer- ence to his work in connection with other doctrines. The Westminster Confession, the Presbyterian standard, is also lacking in any adequate setting forth of the work of the Holy Spirit. Of course the Holy Spirit is men- tioned in these and other great creeds in the statement of the doctrine of the Trinity. But this comes far short of the full requirements of the case. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is so interwoven and intertwined with the whole of the Old and New Testaments that it is one of the strangest oversights that Chris- tians should have neglected it so long. One cause of this negleAPTIST BELIEFS. 49 towards men. Sometimes they speak of the original and primal relation of man to God, or refer to mun as God's offspring in a general sense as in Paul's sermon at Athens. But we find in the New Testament much emphasis upon the nature of that sonship which alone has significance for man in the highest sense, viz., the sonship which arises through faith in Christ, regeneration by the Spirit and moral likeness to God, a sonship so diverse from and so much higher than man's natural like- ness to God that Paul employs the word adop- tion to indicate how it comes to men. Adoption in Paul's writings then is the word borrowed from Koman usage to express the outward act of God corresponding with our inner spiritual change when regeneration takes place and we are made new creatures in moral anid spiritual qualities. Acts 13:39; Rom. 5:9; Rom. 3:25ff; Isa. 53:11, 12; Rom. 8:1; Rom. 5:lff; Rom. 4:4, 5; Rom. 5:21; Rom. 6:23; Rom. 5:19; 1 Cor. 1:30, 31; 1 Tim. 4:8; Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5. SANCTIFICATION. Sanctification is the process by which regen- erate men are gradually transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. The word means first to be set apart to a holy use, and second to become actually holy. In both senses it applies to the Christian believer. 4, 50 BAPTIST BELIEFS. When the Scriptures refer to sanctification as a past act it usually is to be taken in the first sense. The Holy Spirit in the believer carries on the process which continues throughout the present life. The Spirit of God employs the word of truth, the appointm'ents, services and ordinances of the church, the events and expe- riences of our daily life and various other means for our sanctification. No one becomes sinless in the present life. He may and should become more and more complete or mature as the years pass. The Scriptures employ the word perfect to express the idea of symmetry and completeness in the possession of all the parts, as well as of sinless- ness. In the sense of sinlessness it never applies to men in this life. Perfection is the goal and ideal of our Christian life and the most advanced, the most mature or "perfect" Christian, Paul declares, is he who has a sense of his own imperfections (Phil. 3:13-16). The most saintly men and women have al- ways been keenly alive to their shortcomings, just as was Paul the apostle. In his later epistles Paul seems filled as never before with this sense of spiritual defect. He yearns to *'know" Christ and "be found in him"; he counts not himself to have attained; he presses "towards the mark"; he forgets the things that are behind, et<^. All this shows that the more vividly we realize the infinite stand- BAPTIST BELIEFS. ^ 51 ard of holiness in our faith, the more distant do our present attainments seem below it. A self-complacent belief in one's own sinless ''per- fection", therefore, is a sure mark of spiritual blindness. It is the same kind of mistake a child makes who thinks he can grasp a star. He is without appreciation of the interval be- tween him and the star. It is this sense of imperfection which deepens our appreciation of the atonement of Christ and of God's love aa displayed therein. In his first epistle John de- clares that if we walk in the light as he is in the light we ''have fellowship one with an- other". Then as if overcome by the dazzling splendor of God's light and turned back upon his own sinfulness, he adds, "and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). We see then how the sense of imperfection goes along with ua through life, deepening indeed in a real sense as we make spiritual progress. Thus in the Christian life we see the meaning of Paul's paradox in his letter to the Philippians ac- cording to which the most m'ature or "per- fect" Christian is he who most keenly realizes his own imperfections and struggles hardest to overcome them (Phil. 3:15). There is one great danger we should guard against in con- nection with this subject of sanctification. In opposing the "perfectionist" or "sanctification^ ist" we may easily fail to emphasize the im- portance of growth in grace and in Christian 52 BAPTIST BELIEFS. character. We may adopt an attitude of con- tentment with the ordinary conventional Christian life as against the '^higher life", and this is even worse than what we oppose. We may spend our time fighting the ' ^perfectionist" while living a worldly life ourselves. Dr. A. J. Gordon said: "It is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling hurling stones at a Christian perfectionist." We may and should meet his errors, but we should not be led thereby to adopt a low standard for our- selves. Sanctification includes all of the Christian's relationships. Santification is social as well as individual. It is not merely an inward, it is also an outward transformiation. What the Christian is in his relations to his fellowmen in business and social and civic life is the true index of the sanctifying process within. Noth- ing less than the highest ideal is worthy of the Christian calling. We are to aim at per- fection because God our Father is perfect, and the supreme motive and incentive to the holy life is the desire to be like our Father in Heaven. Phil. 2:12, 13; Eph. 4:11; 1 Jno. 2:29; Prov. 4:18; 1 Cor. 1:30; 1 Thess. 4:3; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2; Ex. 13:2; Ex. 28:41; Gen. 2:3; Jno. 10:36; Jno. 17:19; Acts 20:32; Rom. 15:16; 1 Cor. 1:2; Heb. 2:11; Heb. 10:10; Heb. 10:14. BAPTIST BELIEFS. 53 THE PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. The believer in Jesus, who has been regen^ erased by the power of the Holy Spirit, will never utterly fall away from Christ and be lost. He is not free from temptation; he may, through neglect and failure to employ the means of grace, grieve the Holy Spirit and bring reproach upon himself and the people of God. He will, however, turn away from his sins and return to his Christian duty; he will not be content in the wayward life. It is the mark of the child of God that he cannot be happy in a life of sin. Besides this, God's care is ever over his child, God's grace ever seeks the wayward to bring them back. But just as God's loving nature and his firm purpose impel him continually to seek to win the wanderer back to the true life, so also is the renewed heart, the soul born of God's Spirit, inclined to yield to God's gracious appeals. The soul which yields no response to God's seeking love and is wholly content to live a life of world- liness and sin, thereby proclaims itself an unregenerated soul. We are not to think of God's preserving care of the redeemed, there- fore, as if it were a prevention by force and compulsion of the consequences of a sinful life. The resDonsive perseverance of the Christian is as essential a part of the process as God's preserving grace. This is the explanation oi 54 BAPTIST BELIEFS. many New Testament passages which seem to imply that all depends on the act of the believer and not on the grace of God. The grace of Grod is effective only when it produces the necessary response. The possibility of a fall is quite a real one apart from the grace of God. In vain also is the grace of God apart from the response of our will. The New Testa- ment writers do not hesitate, therefore, to state boldly and strongly both facts, in order that God's grace may become effective, through warning and exhortation, in the turning of the wayward will back again to the path of duty. God does not lift his children into Heaven against their wills. The whole of the machinery or system of grace, therefore, is designed to make them willing. Thus do they persevere while at the same time they are preserved. Here again much confusion of thought grows out of the ordinary way of thinking of God^s grace as if it were a physi- cal or mechanical force, like a rope tied around a Christian to keep him from drowning, or a wall built to prevent him from falling over a precipice. The New Testament does not repre- sent it that way at all. It has many terrible warnings against apostacy — not indeed to teach •apostacy but to prevent it. These passages are bewildering to the Christian who thinks of God's preserving care as an outward wall compelling us to keep away from the precipice. God preserves us by inclining us to persevere. BAPTIST BELIEFS. 55 A mother sent her four-year-old boy on an errand across a busy city street full of dangers of all kinds. A friend expressed surprise. The mother said the child had been taught to look carefully up and down before venturing across and she had no fear. This was training. The other would no doubt have seized her child by the hand and towed liim across. God's method is not to tow us but to train us. Grace does not compel, it inclines us. The New Testament emphasizes training as against towing. If we keep this in mind we will understand many otherwise difficult passages. Jna 8:81; 1 Jno. 2:19, 27, 28; 1 Jno. 3:9; 1 Jno. 5:18; Rom. 8:28, 29; PhU. 1:6; PhU. 3;13, 13; 1 Jno. 4:4; Jno. 10:26-29. THE KINGDOM OP GOD. The eternal purpose of God in the revelation of his will to man in the incarnation and work of Christ was the establishment of his King- dom on earth. We can here give only a very condensed outline of the meaning of the King- dom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, both of which forms of expression are found in the New Testament. In the Old Testament all created things are represented as belonging to God's Kingdom. As Creator he is Lord of all things, inanimate as well as animate, suns and stars as well as animals and men and angels. He establishes, however, a Kingdom among 56 BAPTIST BELIEFS. men in the call of Abraham and in the cove- nant with Israel as a nation. That Kingdom passes through various stages, in the patri- archal, Mosaic, kingly and prophetic periods in the history of Israel. In none of these ia the idea of the Kingdom perfectly realized. The incarnation of Jesus Christ continued God's work of revelation. The preaching of Jesus had as its central truth the Kingdom of God. He called men to repentance because the Kingdom of God "is at hand". There are various phases of meaning found in the word as it is employed in the New Testament. It means primarily the reign or rule or domin- ion of God in the human heart and life, but everywhere the Kingdom in the larger and wider sense of God's rule in the universe is taken for granted. In the New Testament the Kingdom of God is an inward and outward power. It is a present and a future reality. Sin *has disturbed God's rule on earth and grace has come in the person of Christ and through his atoning work to restore it. In the New Testament especially is the Kingdom of God a new principle oif redemption in the heart changing men into the moral and spiritual character required by God's will. Righteous- ness in all its forms is the aim' and end of the Kingdom of God. The Gospel is God's ap- pointed means for the realization of the righteousness of the Kingdom. This King- dom of God is not to be identified with any BAPTIST BELIEFS. 57 outward ecclesiastical or civil form of govern- ment. In one of its phases it is practically identical with the spiritual or universal church. But it never coincides exactly with any outward form of ecclesiastical or civil government. The local church is in harmony, or is meant to be in harmony, with the principles of the Kingdom. In a real sense it reproduces, or lo- calizes, and perpetuates the Kingdom of God on earth. Its doctrines and polity must con- form to the teachings and to the essential na- ture of the Kingdom. The Kingdom recedes somiewhat into the background after we leave the gospels and enter the epistles. The church is more prominent in the epistles. Neverthe- less the Kingdom still appears in the teaching of the epistles. Its inner nature is described and its future triumph is clearly indicated. Christ is King in the Kingdom, both in the gospels and in the epistles, and he will com^e at last and as its King he will judge the world and bestow upon men their final awards. The Kingdom thus passes from the earthly to the heavenly and eternal stage. When Christ^s mediatorial work is consummated he delivers up the Kingdom to God the Father. His aton- ing death was necessary to the realization of the ends of the Kingdom and a great and in- dispensable step was taken when the Spirit was given at Pentecost. The duty of Christ's peo- ple is to labor for the coming of God's King- 58 BAPTIST BELIEFS. dom on earth, even as he taught ns in the Lord's prayer. Gen. 2:4ff; Ps. 47:7; Ps. 103:19fC; Ps. 104:4ff; Pa. 119:89ff; Is. 1:2, 3; Is. 43:21; Ex. 19:3-6; Jer. 31:31ff; Ezek. 17:22ff; Matt. ll:10fC; Matt. 3:5, 6; Mk. 1:5; Luke 3:7ff: Jno. 1:19-27; Matt. 13:41; 16:28; 20:21; 25:34; Mk. 1:15; Luke 7:50; 13:3-5; Jno. 18:37; Matt. 5:13-16; 7:21; 7:22; 10:23; 13:41; Luke 12:8; Matt. 13:40; 19:28; Acts 8:12; 14:22; 19:8; 1 Cor. 15:24ff; Eph. 5:6; Col. 1;13; Rev. 1:6; 3:21; 5:10; 11:16, 17; 20:1-8. THE SECOND COMING OP CHRIST. The Scriptures teach that Christ will return in person to this earth. The time of his re- turn is not revealed. The Scriptures do not seem to warrant the belief that a state of per- fect piety will exist on earth when Christ re- turns. Christians are commanded to expect the coming of the Lord always. New Testa- ment Christians did this. There was no ex- plicit teaching that Christ was to come in the New Testament age, but Christians were con- stantly expecting his return. This expectation should not tempt us to do slovenly or super- ficial work, or neglect our duty. It should rather make us conscientious and faithful in the highest degree. The New Testament re- veals no program of events which is to follow the return of Christ. The event itself was the center of the expectation. He may come to- morrow. He m'ay not come in ten thousand years. Matt. 24:27; Matt 25:34f; Mk. 13:3-37; Luke 21:5flf; Acts 1:11: 1 Thess. 5:1-3; 2 Thess. 2:1-12. BAPTIST BELIEFS. 59 THE RESURRECTION. 'At death the bodies of all return to dust. There is to be a resurrection both of the just and the unjust. Little is taught in Scripture regarding the resurrection of the wicked apart from the fact itself. In the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, however, Paul gives a very glorious account of the resurrection of the dead in Christ. Their resurrection bodies are to be free from all sin and infirmity and per- fectly fitted for the glorified spirit. At death the spirits of believers go to Christ. At tEe resurrection body and spirit are reunited and glorified and enter fully upon the eternal re- ward in Christ. Matt. 22:30; Luke 14:14; John 5:29; Acts 1:22; Acts 4:2; Acts 24:15; Rom. 6:5; 1 Cor. ch. 15; Phil. 3:10; 2 Tim. 2:18; Rev. 20:6. THE JUDGMENT. God has appointed a day wherein he will judge the world by Jesus Christ. All men are to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. The word judgment means discrimination. At the judgment men are to be discriminated or separated according to moral character. The Scripture teaching as to the judgment day does not mean that the final destiny of men re- mains uncertain until that judgment takes 60 BAPTIST BELIEFS. place, as if God were ignorant as to their con- dition until he made an investigation. The judgment is rather the formal declaration of conditions which had previously existed. It is the manifestation or exhibition of the righteousness and the love, along with other attributes of God. The principle of judgment is in operation in the earthly life of men in a certain sense. The moral law operates al- ways and everywhere. The final judgment, however, is the necessary culmination of these temporal judgments. God's ways will then be vindicated to men, and the justice of all his dealings with them be made plain. Men will then know and feel the justice of all God's ways. Even wicked mJen, in the illumination of that judgment, will recognize the justice of God's decree concerning them. The Scriptures declare that the righteous do not come into judgment (John 3:18 and 5:24). This, however, does not mean that they will be absent when the great assize shall take plac-e. For Paul declares explicitly that we shall all be made manifest before the judg- ment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). We need only to remember that the word judgment means to discriminate, in order to harmonize these apparently contradictory Scriptures. The discrimination of judgment will divide men into two classes. One class will be condemned, the other approved. The word judgment is often used to indicate the condemnatory side of BAPTIST BELIEFS. 61 the process. To be judged means, in that case, to be condemned. This is what John means when he asserts that believers shall not come into judgment. Not the condemnatory but the approbatory aspect of judgment will befall believers. They shall not come into condem- nation, although they, too, shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Judgment is to be according to works. Un- belief on the part of sinners leads to evil works ; faith on the part of Christians leads to good works. Works in both cases are the out- ward expression of a deeper condition, the at- titude of faith or of unbelief. The fundamental principle which fixes a man's place in the scale of moral worth is that of faith and unbe- lief. Since the judgment does not fix or deter- mine destiny, but simply declares or exhibits it, it is based on the outward expression of the soul's deeper attitude of unbelief and of faith. As works are the outward sign of the inward state, and as judgment likewise is the manifestation or outward sign of the inward state, it is entirely fitting that judgment should proceed on the principle of works. Matt. 25:32ff; Matt. 12:36; Acts 17:31; Jno. 5:22, 27; Rom. 9:22, 23; Mk. 9:48; 2 Thess. 1:5-7; Mk. 13:35, 87; Luke 12:35-40; Rev. 22:20; Matt. 13:49; Rom. 3:5, 6; Rev. 20:11-15. 62 BAPTIST BELIEFS. THE CHURCH. There are two chief senses in which the word church is used in the New Testameoit. In a number of passages it refers to all believ- ers, whether they are thought of as existing on earth, or on earth and in Heaven at any- particular time, or as the total assembly of the redeemed in the life to come. Some take the New Testament teaching as to the univer- sal church in the last sense alone, that is, they assert that the universal church has no exist- ence at present on earth in any sense, but that in the life to come the local church will cease to be and the universal church will come into existence. There are passages, however, which forbid this view. For example, in Ephesians 5:25-27 we read: "Husbands, love your wives, even as 'Christ also loved the church, and gave •himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blem- ish." In this passage the church is viewed as existing in time and in eternity and the continuity of the church which exists in time with that which exists in eternity is miade in- disputably clear. In time it is a church with spots and wrinkles; in eternity it is without spot or wrinkle. In time it needed cleansing BAPTIST BELIEFS. 63 by the washing of water, that is, it was an impure church not yet free from sin. In eternity this same church stands before Christ holy and without blemish. Now if the church here existing in time refers to the local church, then it means the same when it becomes holy and without blemish in eternity, and we have the local church with pastors, deacons and ordinances carried over into eternity. I know of no one who holds this view. The "generic" use of the word church is incompatible with Paul's meaning here. The "generic" sense in which Paul sometimes employs the word refers to the church as an institution without referring to any particular church. Yet int this usage the local church is the institution referred to, which, as we have seen, cannot be described in the language of the passage we are dealing with. iSince, then, Paul cleariy means the same thing in both parts of the sentence, his lan- guage can only refer to the totality of believ- ers both in time and in eternity. The univer- Bal church is not an outward organization at all nor can it be made co-extensive with ecclesiastical bodies scattered over the earth made up of organized parts or branches. It has no earthly ecclesiastical functions or powers. Yet it is mfost real in that it includes all true believers in Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ indeed is the spiritual reality at the basis of the life of all local churches. If it be insig- 64 BAPTIST BELIEFS. nificant or valueless or unreal because it is spiritual, then that same quality is equally- insignificant and valueless in the local church. The visible and tangible in the Chri^ian reli- gion is valueless without the invisible and spiritual. The universal church is as real as the Kingdom of God; indeed, it is practically identical with it. We are not warranted, how- ever, in refusing to employ the word church in this general sense. The New Testament by its own very clear usage gives us most ample warrant for using the word church in the uni- versal sense as defined in the preceding remarks. The great majority of the New Testament passages use the word church to indicate a local body composed of believers in Jesus Christ who are associated together for the cultivation of the Christian life, the .maintenance of the ordinances and discipline, and for the propa- gation of the Gospel. Jesus Christ is Lord of the church. It exists in obedience to his command, and has no mission on earth save the carrying out of his will. It must not form alliances of any kind with the state so that it surrenders any of its own functions or as- sumes any of the functions of civil government. Its government is democratic and autonomous. Each church is free and independent. No church or group of churches has any authority over any other church. Co-operation in Christ- ian work, however, is one of the highest duties BAPTIST BELIEFS. 65 and p'rivilgges of tlie churches of Jesus Christ. Yet in so doing they do not form or consti- tute an ecclesiasticism with functions and powers to be authoritatively exorcised over the local bodies. The voluntary principle is the heart of the Scripture teaching as to tho in- dividual and as .to local churches. All souls are entitled to equal privileges in the church, just as all churches are entitled to equal privi- leges in the Kingdom of God. The indi- vidual precedes the group logically as well as in order of time, and the organization and government of the local church pro- ceeds on the principle of the voluntary association of free individuals in obedience to Christ and for purposes set forth by him. Church discipline is simply the group protecting itself against the individual. The church has no power of coercion in the reli- gious life of the individual. The individual stands or falls to his own Master, and is judged only by him. The right of the church, however, to protect itself against the disorderly individual is an unalienable right in Christ. The objection sometimes made against church discipline on the score that it is unwarranted coercion overlooks this fact. Here we may point out the relation of local Bapti^ churches to general Baptist bodies, missionary, educational, etc. Ihe latter are not composed of churches but of individuals. ChuTohes may use them or not use them, co '66 BAPTIST BELIEFS. operate with themi or refuse to co-operate with them. In all such co-operation or refusal to co-operate, however, the church neither -assumes authority over the general hody, nor submits to the authority of that body. The relation is voluntary on both sides. The church does not create nor is it created by the general body. Where a church is out of harmony with a gen- eral body it cannot legislate the general body into harmony with itself but it can wi^thdraw if necessary without the consent of the gen- eral body. A general body has no power to retain an unwilling church in co-operative re- lations with it. There is no conflict of juris- diction between a chuxch and a general body where messengers come from churches into meetings of general bodies. As members of the general body they vote and act as individ- ual freemen in Christ. They may act under the influences of the known wishes of their churches in measures which are considered in the general body. This, however, is not ecclesiastical compulsion but spiritual in- fluence. General bodies are themselves autono- mous. No Baptist general body has authority over another. They exist in a graded series but this does not imply legislative or judicial authority. It is for convenience and efficiency. Each body is self determining as to con^itu- tion and by laws, aims and purposes, territorial limits and methods. There are certain neces- sities which arise ouit of these principles of BAPTIST BELIEFS. 67i Biaptist organization. 1. The necossity for clear thinking in order to avoid confusion in ideals and collision in the practical work of the Kingdom. 2. The necessity for well de- fined limits of function and aim in t/he general body to avoid the assumption of church func- tions. 3. The necessity for courtesy and re- spect as between Baptist general bodies. The officers of the church are bishops or elders and deacons. The New Testament em'- ploys the word bishop and elder to designate the samo officer, these terms being descriptive of functions and not of separate officials. The bishop or elder is an officer of the local churc^h, not of any group of churches with general jurisdicftion. His authority is that of influence and leadership rather than official. He is Called of the Holy Spirit to the work and is set apart by or'dination for the discharge of special functions and has no authority to lord it over God^s heritage. And yet as leader and guide the church owes to him its loyalty and support. His task is particularly that of spir- itual leadership, while the deacons axe charged rather with the temporal affairs of the church. The ordinanc g^ of a church are baptism and t he 'Lord's~lgup per! Th ese two set forth in a very beautiful and comprehensive way tlie filji damental truths of the Gospel. They ar e not sacra j nent s b uT^ordin^ge s ; t hey do n ot con fer or communicalte or impart grace iii _and of themse lves. They are outward symbols 68 BAPTIST BELIEFS. which ^gmfxj^OTjL^rQlojind.iiiithsjand^ t ruths" have vital power J a thfi f?hTi,^ian~life when duly apprehenderi or spiritiially discern- rd —by t i hn reH pi ^ nt wh^n 't h^ nHi^^^ Li onel are administered . There is no Scripture warrant whatever for any increase in the number of the ordinances from two to seven or any other number. The Roman Catholic Church is wholly wrong in this matter and the multi- plication of sacraments is a great evil in that body. Matt. 16:18: Matt. 18:17; Acts 2:47; Acts 8:1; Act» 14:28; Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 14:4, 5, 23; Eph. 1:22; Eph. 3:10; Eph. 5:24-32; Col. 1:18; Heb. 12:23. BAPTISM. Baptism is an ordinance of Jesus Christ es- t'ablished for perpetual observiance by his peo- ple. Every believer or regenerate person is un- der obligation to submit to this ordinan'ce of Jesus Christ. Baptism is the immersion in water of the believer in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The truths sym'bolized in baptism are the follow- ing: 1. Remission of sins. 2. Fellowship or union with Christ in his death and resurrec- tion. The form of baptism strikingly symbol- izes death, burial and resurrection. 3. Cleans- ing from all unrighteousness and consecration to the service of Ood, a complete self-surrender to the service of the Kingdom of God and re- BAPTIST BELIEFS. 69 solve to walk in newness of life. Baptism is a prerequisit e to church fello wship, andjo gar- ticipationm_theLgrd/sLSupper. . Immersion is essehlilarto Christian 'baptism. Other forma destroy (the meaning of the ordinance. The consensus of the scholarship of all denomina- tion's declares that immersion only is baptism. The Greek word_tQ_JW'hi[^ . Qiir _woidJbaplisin correspond j^ajacmlyjncan im Baptjsm does_not regenerate. It is to be ad- ministered ito those who . have previously been regeneratjidljjy-JheL -Spirit.jQf_God. Baptism does not secure remission of sins save in a sym- bolic way. The previously forgiven person is T^he only proper subject for baptism. Baptism is sim ply the outward symbol of wbaitjhag,^!- ready taken place within the subject . Baptism confers no spiritual but only a symbolic remis- sion of sins. Baptism "for remission of sins" (Acts 2 :38) has reference only to the symbolic remission set forth by the act. Forgiveness, or remission, is inherently a divine act and to make it a function of baptism is to ascribe a divine function to an outward ordinance. Moreover, if baptism actually conferred remis- sion of sins, it would have io be repeated after each sin, whereas baptism is administered onoe only to each believer. Matt. 3:7ff; Matt. 21:25; Mk. 1:4; Rom. 6:4; Eph. 4:5; Col. 2:12; 1 Peter 3:21; Mk. l:9fC; Acts 2:38; Acts 2:41; Acts 8:38; Acts 18:8; Gal. 3:27. 70 BAPTIST BELIEFS. THE LORD S SUPPER. The Lord^s Supper is an ordinance of Christ's il ' "T" ^ ^ 61 ^i>f> PKINTKOiMU ■.